


Valley Town

by meinmei



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Language, Other, Out of Character, Philosophy, Psychology, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 08:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13807743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinmei/pseuds/meinmei
Summary: Created: 28.11.2016A lot can happen in middle of nowhere - Fargo





	Valley Town

**Author's Note:**

> There are few things about this work:
> 
> 1, English isn't my first language so mistakes are unavoidable, pls tell me if there is any.
> 
> 2\. This is the first time I write something for NCT in English and it took a long time, I'm really happy.

\---

 

_A lot can happen in middle of nowhere_

 

Lee Taeyong had always been a good guy. He cared deeply for his family and loved his friends dearly. He was handsome, as many praised, gifted with a face that could light up an entire room, a kind of face that wouldn't be forgotten so easily.

Lee Taeyong lived a rather simple life, out of which he couldn't fathom the opportunities to make things better or worse, nor did he want to. His ordinary life never matched his face; people had said that anyone with that kind of face shouldn't have had a life like his. But Lee Taeyong never wanted anything more than what he already had. He sort of liked his life as how it was at the moment. He thought every one of its moments was precious and meaningful. One of those must have been when he spent looking at a piece of paper on the wall of his room. He did it almost every day, always right before going to work.

There were some wise words from Albert Camus.  _"After awhile you could get used to anything."_

He wasn't sure if he'd understood this idea fully in the way Camus might have wanted him to. Getting used to anything after a while had to be a very good thing, he guessed. The last week's quote was a line from Swami Sivananda _"Put your heart, mind, and soul into even your smallest acts. This is the secret of success"_. Clear and understandable, one of his favorites.

Like every other day, he read the words and thought hard. It wasn't awhile, it'd been five years already and this year he would turn to be a young single, employed twenty-seven year-old man soon. At twenty seven, things seemed to be pretty much settled down for him. Twenty seven years of a simple life that he held dear, five years of a job he already got used to. So after all, his life was not only simple but also perfect and he dared anyone to cast a doubt on it.

Taeyong lived in a small Scandinavian valley town and worked for an Asian company here. An office of a Korean corporation to be exact, the only one in the whole Scandinavia peninsula. He never knew why they chose this very small, isolated town out of the entire Europe, in also an isolated valley, surrounded by sheer mountains with a population of hardly five hundreds people, to open a representative office on top of all. It didn't sound like a very effective business plan. The office was opened five years ago, right after his college graduation, he remembered. Taeyong indeed had been studying in a university, located in a medium-sized city which was only few hundreds kilometers away from here. He never had that presentiment of doing well in a city that stuffed with too many people and a lot of things to deal with at once. To graduate successfully was quite a feat for him. So he came back to where he'd come from. Then the god of luck smiled upon him. This newly opened office happened to give him an offer for a decent position which seemed worthy of a college graduate.

Koreans living in the town were all company's employees who'd come from the other side of Earth. The side, like any other side, Taeyong knew nothing of. Some of them would leave from time to time and some would arrive once or twice every two years. But not Taeyong, he was  _from_  the valley. He had always been in the town apart from the four years spent in college. In his parents’ younger days, during their trip around Europe together, they discovered this town by accident. Both his parents came from Korea, after such great finding they quickly settled, built a family in this "very lovely and tranquil" _haven_. And before they knew it, there weren’t a thing that could make them leave anymore. Taeyong was born in the valley and raised in the valley.

The office accommodated enough space for about ten staffers. It wasn't like the ten workers necessarily needed to be presented in the office all the time: sales girls went out once in a while and freight boys absent for longer trips. The fields were diverse and they agreed to call themselves under the Trade and Media category. Taeyong covered few sessions of company's monthly magazine and its website's updates. He could write anything about Scandinavia from its way of life, culture, and politics. Even something simple as daily-life stories around this town also counted. On the end of his articles, recommending some healthy "made in Korea" products was always a must thing to do. Daily update but not much of a job anyway. But he had a talent in writing, especially about this particular small, isolated valley. Still Taeyong treated his ennui like it always came fresh and stay for only one day. He called it a "gamble" – might the next day wouldn't be as boring as the day before.

Taeyong never liked to call the place "town". "Valley" sounded way more melodic, dreamier and people here also preferred the latter. "Can I get a ride to the valley?", "I'm from the valley", just that and everyone knew where you were talking about. And so he had this small corner name "Valley Town" on the company’s website which featured all sorts of valley things: from just a random photo with the aerial view of the town he took on the nearest mountain to the transcript of an argument between two old women about when the next snow storm would hit. It came from a very personal perspective, filled with details and realness. And surprisingly, people liked it. The corner was the star of the whole site and even had a fair amount of regular readers. No one asked why the boss granted him full authority to write anything he wanted.

Sometimes Taeyong introduced a random emotional ancient word from his dictionary. He, after all, had been a linguistic university student for the full course. Now he was making money by doing what he'd learned. That thought made he feel better.

He had one for today.

 

**.hiraeth**

(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

 

 _That was Welsh._ He noted simply at the end. He waited about half an hour to see how many likes he would get, or if he was lucky today, a few comments this early. Then he would turn to work on something else, like a full-length article on Scandinavian design trends assigned for him from last week. All that bright, simple and elegant styles. Taeil, his content manager had sent him real photos and footages days ago. Today his job was to review about more than one hundred items in Taeil's USB and he just knew that he was going to love it.

Taeyong didn't live with his parents for about three years already. They had moved up to a small Scandinavian styled cottage on the mountain, deep in a lonely, dense coniferous forest. Their new house was indeed beautiful, too beautiful. They had a lake nearby, pine trees surrounded, thick snow in winter and all the more. Taeyong might visit them on weekends one or two or three times a year, or he might not.

Rarely did he check the calendar after reaching home, neither before he left. The job never required him to know exactly which day it was, saved for when Taeil ran big projects from time to time then he had to mark the deadline. Today was unusual. The latest project just finished therefore no reason to know the date but he checked nevertheless. It was already mid-autumn. His parents and some old folks up on that mountain would be enjoying the weather and scenery there so much. To old people, there was no need to check the day, too.

The dinner that night had nothing so special. He got some frugal Ärtsoppa which he tried hard to not think about what it was going to taste like. And no, today wasn't Thursday. On beautiful days he might have thought of cooking something delicious with meat and vegetables instead of sipping packed pea soup brought at that scanty grocery store down the main road. It wasn't because of the idleness he had toward shopping; just that there weren't enough beautiful days in this north temperate-zoned town. Autumn in a valley could be gloomy and cold, even summer wouldn't be much better. Therefore quick dinners were always preferable. He contemplated, sometimes during the stretch of the night, merely drew an absurd conclusion. That it was very likely that the stagnancy of this very place played the main role in making his life like this. But he didn't know how to define "this".

He knew what he was going to do next, as always. A small box he placed under his bed was waiting for him. For some unknown reason it had to be kept out of sight. But on some nights he would sit on his bed, hold it in his hands, open the lid and read everything inside. Then as dawn approaching, the papers slipped off, he dozed the night away.

 

Taeil had always been one of the kindest men alive, Taeyong supposed. He never gave him hard times, considerately knew how to be honest with his advices and opinions, especially ones that related to work. Taeyong felt grateful toward his superior for making everything this easy. And above everything else, Taeil had proven he was his best friend and colleague, the only one in the office he could actually talk to.

His supervisor was only a year older so any kind of distance didn’t really get in between them. Taeyong remembered the warmth in his chest when he laid his eyes on the man the first day he came into office, in replacement of the previous content manager. Taeil had this charming awkwardness that made others want to protect him but once he started to work, no one could be more serious. Now his fourth year living in this valley was already here. Things seemed to be fine. In the first year Taeyong helped Taeil a lot in settling life and improving his English. In return, Taeil taught him a bit Korean. The older had seemed to be very surprised when Taeyong introduced that he was actually a Korean by blood because "you don't look like one, you don't look like me, like at all!" Taeyong laughed out loud at such exclamation and told him about the story of his parents then gained another gasp from his fellow countryman. Taeil couldn't believe Taeyong had been living all his life here, in this valley. He couldn't find anything wrong with that but it just seemed  _odd_.

They got along very well, at least up to now. The best part must have been the time Taeil passionately told Taeyong everything about his home country and explained how beautiful Seoul the capital could be, just...everything. It was good, felt good, _he_ felt good about Taeil's endless stories, Taeyong deemed. Yet regardless his kind efforts, Korea remained a mere picture of another peninsula in Taeyong's head.

Taeil came to know Taeyong's stories, where he spent his college life, what his days in the valley were like, about his parents right now not living with him even though they were still hanging around here. Taeyong watched Taeil coped with a new routine, the change of weather, timezone difference, language barrier, struggles with house host, etc. However Taeil went through everything pretty well, already settled down in his first year. During his second year, his salary raised and more importantly he successfully convinced his mother to leave Seoul and come all the way to this oddly isolated place, of course only after he had enough money to rent a bigger apartment - the one on the opposite side to the cross-road, right next to an abandoned mansion. It had to feel good to live with someone you love but it was not the case for Taeil's mother. Life here appeared to be too foreign, too slow with too few people and too much space. After five months, his mother flew back to her cozy Seoul after crying and yelling her lungs out at her adult son for about two hours straight. Taeil still said it was fine, forcing someone was never the way; he just worried who would take care of her because back home, she had no one else. Taeyong thought hard before said that she was lonelier here, in this valley, not there. To that Taeil smiled.

During the lunch time, Taeil often sat with Taeyong out on the porch, a small square outside the office, together chewing food in silence. Then if Taeyong felt the need to communicate, he would start the talk about what a good woman Taeil's mother was and would always be, and she would be just fine. At some point during their comfort sort of talk, the older tried to kindle in Taeyong the enthusiasm for a visit to his parents, said he'd be more than glad to be introduced to them, of course on a free, beautiful autumn afternoon on any weekend.  Taeyong always stayed silent at that idea, he gave no promise.

On one beautiful summer day about a year ago, Taeil had once again sat beside Taeyong. "Life is still good, you think?" Taeyong had given a yes. Life had been good still, exceptional good even, in this safe and serene valley where no disaster could possibly be imagined. It’d been good, like Taeil's English had improved to another level at the moment, and Taeyong could get salary raise soon, might be when the office welcomed two newcomers by the end of the year. What strange youngsters those people were. Those who wanted to come here and work! Daily life had been remaining the same as always, work – home – work, going round and round that circle for years now and more to come. Nothing would be better than this.

"But there is something I can't put my finger on." Taeil had suddenly blurted.

"What is?" Taeyong had been slightly taken aback at the new direction of their conversation. Speaking vaguely had never been a thing Taeil would do.

"I don't know." The content manager had shrugged.

"Then figure it out." Taeyong had frowned yet let it go.

 

At the very least they could leisurely be under the impression that life had been so good for over a year. Just when autumn started to fade, the newly appointed representative showed up, seemed to be unsatisfied with everything. Kim Dongyoung was tall, handsome and very successful in life. No one knew why he was moved to this poor, shabby valley (he wouldn’t say) when with the capacity of his, he could easily stay at home, in Korea, at his big desk of Sales Department, and still hit big.

Kim Dongyoung was indeed given "salesman of the year" award year consecutively for nearly a decade which was just another evidence of his greatness. Now here he was and Taeil suddenly became the new boss's favorite victim along with all of the Sales and Marketing room. Taeyong was luckily ignored just because the boss had yet to get a hold on what his job actually could be. They all get kicked out to the street to promote the company's brands and products. A trip to the big city, just few hundreds kilometers from the valley, was booked right after the boss realized this town was too small to sell anything and let alone making big profit. All of them hit the road for that short journey then returned with no good result. Now Taeyong got to be blamed. The content was claimed to be not solid enough, no point whatsoever, no visible call-to-action, nothing more than a "bunch of garbage". The boss even made fun of the ancient words on the blog, called them some "stupid over-sentimental tumblr-ish teenage shit". Everyone was pissed by that because how could someone hate such cute words? The girls of the Sales and Marketing desk were huge fans, they even printed them out to decorate their corner (now all were removed under new demand). Taeil and freight boys used to talk about each word for days. To them these small things were quite important because, really, what else was there to entertain them in this out-of-nowhere town besides their own web blog and Taeyong's mysterious and interesting articles. Still, in the end, no one dared to say a thing about it. Taeyong apologized and promised to come up with more effective content in upcoming days.

That day Taeyong came home in a very bad mood. As soon as he entered his room, he lunged at the bed direction, frantically knelt down and reached for the box he kept there. He pried it open and took out a pile of neatly folded papers.

He sat and read all night.

 

_"Dear Taeyong,_

_Everyone here is strange, in a good way, of course. They spend most of their time to meditate, walk and pray. And in everything they do they put all of their heart into it no matter how small it is. I admire that, really, I also admire that they give enough time and space people need. No one rushes anyone. No one pushes anyone. No one expects anything from anyone._

_Everybody waits for the right time to come as if they knew for certain that it will. I think it's a kind of kindness we never knew of but we do deserve._

_Can you believe I'm going to see the divine Everest and Annapurna with my own eyes? Just few days more. I can't either. But dreams do come true. I will write more and send more pictures to you when I complete the circuits. You will be amazed. You will be moved, I believe._

_Dearest,_

_J."_

This letter was from a long time ago but he still felt that he just had received it yesterday. That this far-off, exotic and too-poorly-described place must have been the place Taeyong dreamt of the very last night. It must have been. The place in this letter, for whatever it would be, sounded so much like a heaven, created from a childhood dream Taeyong once forgot....

Taeyong took out the newer ones to read some more and spent the rest of the night staring at the pictures of mountains covered in white clouds, of green thick forest under morning gleams. He felt miserable.

 

J was Jaehyun – used to be an eight years old boy who first had come to this town when Taeyong at that time, ten. He’d left when at twenty.

Taeyong decided to continue his daily routine. He prepared a word for a new working day although he’d been told to write an article about "how to use fruits effectively to improve your skin health", promoting the company's newest lotion product.

So it was a Scottish word.

 

**.caim**

(.n) (lit.) "sanctuary", an invisible circle of protection, drawn around the body with the hand, that reminds you that you are safe and loved, even in darkest times.

 

Then he waited for it.

Around mid-day, when the outside was getting brighter compared to how gloomy the morning had been, Dongyoung furiously stormed into his room after getting back from a business trip to some stores in the big city, face red, eyes widened and lips trembled with fume.

In few seconds, Taeyong was thinking about what a disaster would possibly look like in this town. Dongyoung must have been it; Dongyoung was destined to be it – the disaster no one imagined to come one day.

"Are you fucking with me?" His words were stretched one by one, emphasized and sharp as knives yet unexpectedly carrying a sense of calmness as if he’d been already used to something like this – the kick-off he had been waiting for.

Taeyong gawked at his narrow pair of eyes for a second longer then shook his head.

"No, sir. I'm going to write that article right now as planned. What is wrong?" Dongyoung's eyes widened even more at the unexpected question.

"You asking me? I told you to stop posting those bullshits to focus more on the products. Which exact part you didn't understand? I bet you are picking a fight with me right now!" This was when Taeil came in and saved the day as he had always been doing.

Taeyong sat still until all the noises in his room gone. Taeil had told the boss that he himself gave Taeyong permission to post whatever he liked on that "Valley Town" corner so that it was in fact his fault. That he "will talk with ‘his guy’ to adjust to the new requests". Dongyoung cried at Taeil with his high pitched voice that it had never been requests but  _logic and common sense_. The content manager hastily agreed and they kind of moved on.

He worked extra hard that day, didn't breath any word to either of the bosses. Tension had grown in the office since day one of Dongyoung's ministration. But on the bright side, productivity also had started to change, the SEO numbers were getting decent at least. So their boss must have been right from the start, they’d been doing nothing but lazing around all this time: _incompetent, treacherous, worst kinds of human being, etc._

Taeil came by Taeyong's house later to make sure he was alright. Before that Taeyong had texted him it was nothing, and of course he was fine. But Taeil didn't listen and here they were, standing outside the door, holding beers and looking up to the night sky full of stars while the autumn fading away a little too quick, winter already looming over, waiting to reign.

"Life is still good then?  _Hyungnim_?" Taeyong asked sarcastically, watching Taeil's face slowly turned into a bitter smile.

"Yeah, I guess. Just look at the sky, life can't be that bad." Taeyong were quite amused with the answer. He did what his friend suggested, looking up to the night sky of Scandinavia.

After a good minute of silence, Taeil suddenly asked. "Do you have any wise word about this whole... magnificence?"

"What magnificence?" Taeyong raised an eyebrow, eyes fixed upward.

"The sky, of course. What else do you think I'm talking about?"

Taeyong shrugged, tried to search through his now tipsy mind. "Oh yes, there is,  _Acatalepsy_ , meaning the impossibility of comprehending the universe, the belief that human knowledge can never have true certainty."

Taeil protested. "No, I don't like angst or agnosticism. Give me the sky." Taeyong laughed out loud. "Then sorry, my friend, I don't have one right now."

Taeil looked at Taeyong's face for moment and decided to speak out his thought. "You know... you rarely smile. Your smiles are beautiful, do it more often."

.

_"Dear Taeyong,_

_I'm not well right now so to avoid idleness, I used all my strength left to force myself to write you one more letter. You must be very worried, or not, I don't dare to guess but I'll be fine soon._

_I will tell you more specifically. I'm in Ladakh, I had a fever after two weeks out on the road but a kind mid-aged woman then accepted to let me stay until I get better. God bless her. I think her daughter likes me. She is quite pretty._

_Ladkh is so special in many ways. From the incredible blue sky to the rocky grey mountains, the winding roads. From the word "juleh" coming from anywhere there are humans. My dear linguist, I have to be bold and proud this time and tell you the meanings of this magic word. It is all Hello, Thank you and Goodbye packed in one. What a miracle!_

_Most special are the road signs. They are so funny, I mean, even if there is mention of death, they are still interesting. But there is this road sign which is outstanding to me. It carries a message which is quite odd compared to others. It seems to talk about something else rather than being careful while driving. It seems sad._

The journey of life is long, the path unknown. _How patronizing! How curtly! And how true. There are beauties in unknown paths, do you think?_

_I want to be bold one more time. I did read one or two books about language and I found a diamond. It's a word I thought of when admiring the night sky of Ladkh, bewildered by the countless stars, just as beautiful as your eyes but not as memorizing. I wrote it at the back of the photo I send together with this letter. I challenge you to find its meaning which is just too easy for you, isn't it?_

_Juleh! Taeyong._

_J."_

 

Around mid-night, after being woken by a weird dream, Taeyong found himself reading that letter over and over again. Now thanks to the small yellow desklight on the table, he could read the word written on the back of a clear picture of the majestic starry sky. It read " _acatalepsy_ ".

Lee Taeyong had that kind of dreams. In those dreams, he often found himself in middle of nowhere, running lost or standing in front of dark roads, always bare footed. Then he would jerk awake, unable to sleep again.

 

This morning Taeyong saw a new quotation, shared from his favorite philosophy twitter account. Then he stared at the old piece of paper stuck on the wall for a while. It was still his most favorite, though. It had been a long time since the last time he’d changed quote.

Taeyong put down the pen and pasted the new sticker on top of the old one.

 _"Life is always at some turning point."_  – Irwin Edman

 

He was uncertain of knowing if his life already got to that turning point or how soon it would but it seemed Taeil’s was at a big one right now. Dongyoung blamed Taeil for everything from the low monthly sales numbers, to the small, unorganized office which he’d once accidentally called “shithole”. His messy hair became the joke, obviously because his messy hair had also been one of the reasons for the office’s unproductive performance. 

“You piece of shit. You haven’t once run a decent project, have you? What is this? Why would we need to know about Scandinavian design style? We are AREN’T selling furniture here but COMESTICS, focus on that.”

Dongyoung threw the three-month old magazine edition straight to the content manager’s face. He just stood there in silence, solemnly almost. Taeyong watched and watched how the manager’s shoulders slumped further down each second past by, as if there was a gigantic, invisible and unknown rock crushing down, condemning him and him only for all the crimes committed on this world. Taeil had never been good at fighting back, at anybody, for anything. The fact that he’d never utter even a single word to make his mother stay, never stood up and defended himself against his dearest mother’s vicious words that he’d always been a failure of her life and only a failure like him would ever wanted to live in this deserted, abandoned town; added up to that forever silence. How did Taeyong know? That day he’d come to his friend’s new house for calebration only to be stopped at the front door by the mother’s yelling from the inside, so much like a mad woman. Taeil had never known. Taeil still took everything in like a bag not only with no bottom but ripped with dozens and dozens of holes on the body. “It’s alright”, he would say, “life is still good”.

Taeyong could only guess the reasons his “Valey Town” was loved by many and became exceptionally meaningful to the office staffers. Maybe the images of this town Taeyong created did such a good job at comforting the lonesome souls that went too far away from home, making them forget that all they signed up for was only this awfully quiet and peaceful exile, just because back in the day they hadn’t done enough to be wanted. That too, was a crime.

The exile was indeed very nice, so no one batted an eye, not even when Dongyoung was the one who did nothing productively besides yelling at people then convicted them for already obvious mistakes. Taeyong was positive that this turning point would soon stop turning and whatever it would be at the outcome he hoped things to get better because, well, their sales statistics started looking pretty good, which meant money. Girls of Sales and Marketing desk had been going out all days, running back and forth between the town and the city. Freight boys had been busier than ever, often absent for even longer trips. Taeyong and Taeil had been holding presentations twice a week, made plans even for a year ahead, updated websites like robots (and very effective ones at that). Things would get better; he was sure, because they had been working and would continue working like a real representative trading office.

But then Dongyoung suddenly used Korean during work. He gave instructions by Korean, sometimes talked on phone by Korean but mostly he scolded Taeil solely by Korean. And realization came like a wrecking ball to Taeyong; Dongyoung had known that Taeyong couldn’t speak Korean fluently.

Taeil often looked at him briefly and miserably, at some point with a guilty expression which he didn’t get why. His superior tried to report to the boss once in English but it only triggered in Dongyoung a tantrum like never before. Taeyong let that slipped too, even when Dongyoung commented on his usual weekly ENGLISH presentations by that alien Asian language.

“Life is still good, isn’t it?” Taeil once again sat on the same next chair beside Taeyong, on the same porch.

“Yeah, I guessed.” Taeyong murmured the answer, lost in his own thoughts.

“Do you think that tyrant will throw these chairs away when he got back?” Taeyong chuckled at the scenario somehow sourly, for a moment wishing “that tyrant” would never come back even if he knew it was impossible.

“We can only hope he won’t do that.” They dropped the talk when saw one of the sales girls who just came back from a business trip, approaching them and gave them some snacks. They chatted a bit about the snow, firewood running out, frozen water…. Yes, winter had come to the valley.

When the two were left by themselves to finish their lunch, Taeil seemed a little bit off. There was a long pause before he asked a very serious question. “Do you believe in what you write?”

Taeyong was surprised but thought long and hard enough before answering obediently, with honesty. “Not quite. I mean…all the things I’ve written are trash anyway. I mean…I was paid for those words. How can you believe in something like that?”

 

The other day Taeyong found himself wearing a pair of shoes that was a little too tight for him. Of course it was because he’d “owned” them for five years now. They were not new, and also not originally his. The white color had turned in a shade of dark gray, the shoelaces worn out and if he used them for a long walk, his feet would get hurt. However, tonight he had been rambling around his small house for an hour in an absolute comfort, allowing his mind off to the farthest memories he could recall.

Just by look, strangers could have called Jaehyun a bright kid compared to many others, including Taeyong himself, except that the kid had some kind of bipolar disorder which his parents had done everything to keep it a secret. He used to have more maniac episodes than bouts of depression. When he was in a mania, he always ran into the forest and stayed there for hours. Yes, that forest, under daylight, from every place of town Taeyong could find those dark green masses easily, most of time they suffused like broken nights and awful dreams, other times they got real close, surrounding the town like an enemy’s army. Jaehyun could suddenly get sad and cry, about the smallest thing that made him upset, but most of the time he cried because he hated the valley, everything inside it. At times like those, he would climb the mountain. Yes, that mountain, from here Taeyong could see it, too.

The disorder had been healed quite spectacularly, or their parent made it seemed so. The long walks and climbs must have helped. He’d grown up and went through puberty without any attempt of suicide. He’d become handsome and done so well with schools even though he’d disputed schools so damn much. On one particular mid-July night he’d left behind this pair of shoes at Taeyong’s front door. He’d _fled_ , as he himself written in the letter, and Taeyong had never gone to the station. Taeyong had been confused; he’d not known why he had to flee; the kid had begged but never explained. So after such fruitless effort, Jaehyun, sweet and strong and patient Jaehyun, had come to this door one last time just to be gone forever. Jaehyun had left his shoes here on the night of his first journey, bare-footed. Sweet and strong Jaehyun got out of the valley at his twenty, left everything behind, including Taeyong. Taeyong stayed, with old scars on his wrists, with cyclothymia going on about two years after, with a full-time paid job. Then things normalized due to the thing people called maturity. Days and nights were just days and nights apart from the ones of Jaehyun’s letters’ arrival; they changed to something else, nostalgic and full of sleepless dreams. Taeyong never wrote back a single word but letters still came to him regularly, once a month, sometimes three months, or maybe five. But they did come.

Together with letters were pictures, a lot of pictures, of trees, cliffs and hills, roads, bridges, sun and moon, houses, people, animals…but in any of those, Jaehyun’d never once appeared. Taeyong now forgot what his old friend looked like but it was fine, he guessed, plenty of things could make up for that. There were notes of foreign words of different languages, scripts of alien hieroglyphs, paragraphs written out of local literature works, torn book pages with full of circles and annotations in bold pencil lines, explanations of custom and culture of lands Taeyong had never heard of. That was a whole big world outside of the valley, Taeyong measured.

Jaehyun had stopped fleeing long ago. Now he was searching.

Taeyong remained being not sure why he had to flee if he ever does it.

 

No one asked Kim Dongyoung to stop using Korean in a Scandinavian office located in a god damn Scandinavian valley. Taeyong just watched as IT happened. First there was only Dongyoung using Korean by himself. Then he forced his fellow Korean colleagues to do so. Taeil had to use the language with his boss when they talked business. And now everyone was using it even when Dongyoung wasn’t anywhere near them. It was like the linguistic reflection one of his professors once talked about. _One can’t stop using his tongue when his fellow countrymen are willing to use it._ Taeyong understood very well, and he kept his mouth in a closed thin line whenever he was in the office. Everyone started to forget that he existed, too; that he also had a Korean name. The most unexpected thing happened, to him, was that sometimes his friend, his comrade forgot as well, only sometimes. But Taeyong couldn’t really blame anyone, he’d been left out for too long and he’d done nothing to get back in. He now knew he was an outsider from the very start. To this valley town, he was an outsider, because he didn’t look Scandinavian or Celtic, didn’t have blue or grey eyes, blonde or brown hair or at least a Latin alphabetical name. To this office, he was without too; for the one fault his boss imposed on him only - being so unable to understand whatever significant things comes out of his fellow Koreans’ mouths. He was singled out in anywhere. He didn’t belong to anything. _Was this the reason Jaehyun had to flee?_ Taeyong shuddered at the question that came too sudden in his mind. He had never thought of Jaehyun during work.

And today’s break was full of Korean too. Even though Taeyong didn’t understand he quite made it out what the mirth was about. Sales desk just hit the jackpot with highest monthly revenue ever. Taeil’s project got the magazine featured on many popular websites. Taeyong tried hard to make himself appear to be busy. In fact, he lost track with what was going on around him since the morning. At time like this, to prevent a dysthymic episode from coming, he got back with his weird and depressing vocabulary.

 

**.torschlusspanik**

(n.) fear that time is running out to achieve life goals. Literally gate shutting panic.

 

It didn’t help, at all.

 

Taeyong used the Jaehyun’s shoes to go out for a walk before winter could get any worse. That was a strange day of winter. The sun was high, no clouds in sight and the sky painted in light blue color. The air was clear like crystal. Cold and clear. Far-off was the snow-covered forest. It looked like silence. Tranquility. The small stream up in the mountain must have been frozen together with the trees. What his parents and the old folks could possibly do in this kind of cold, in middle of nature? From here everything was static; the town was quiet, too. Taeyong walked and walked. His footprints engraved on the soft, white snow.

 

Taeil came to Taeyong one winter day. They had been spending time together less and less, mostly because the chairs on the porch had been removed just like they had feared, a welcome booth replaced, filled with new products, fliers and brochures. So they had no choice besides standing by the new booth, exposed to the sleet. “It’s good to talk in English, you know.” Taeil exclaimed, showing that he was aware of Taeyong’s problem.

“It is.” Taeyong gave a small smile, then refocused on his coffee. Long pause.

“How did we end up in this shithole?” Taeyong turned, eyes wide in surprise. Taeil didn’t return his eyes. He kept staring to the snowy sky.

“I feel like we shouldn’t have lived this way but then how should we do it I do not know.” Taeyong brows knitted, and for a moment he felt like he was listening to Korean all over again.

“If something happens right now, Taeyong. Like if I say “I love you” to you, neither as brothers nor friends, what will you say?” Taeil seemed and sounded… so strange. But Taeyong didn’t quite figure out how and why. He didn’t even understand what had been said.

“What?” Taeil reached his hands out to grab Taeyong’s face in a swift, panicking movement; while on his own face, a crooked, distorted smile bloomed. “I love you. Would you say _yes_?” Taeyong blinked.

“Yes.”

“Yes to _what_?” The older cut him off in a very unpleasant manner, rude almost.

“Yes, I love you, too.” Taeil crumbled. He withdrew his hands to place them on his face. Taeyong didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

“Wrong answer, Taeyong. Why? You know the answer but you still say yes?” The supervisor thickened his voice with the anger and disappointment Taeyong had not once known. At this very moment he wondered – _why him_ , out of all the people here, people back there in Seoul, why on earth Taeyong had to be the first person ever for Taeil to raise his voice at, and to show those kinds of emotions, why?

“What is the answer, then?” Taeil shook his head, said nothing more. And Taeyong, as consistent as always, would show the poor man the only thing he ever had – a humbled, silent loyalty, to be on his side at time like this, no matter what happens, asking nothing more. In order to keep this thin, strained string stayed attached; Taeyong couldn’t afford to be nosy.

 

Back at home, that night, Taeyong repeated the talk with Taeil over and over in his head. The more he did it, the more reassuring he found by convincing himself that Taeil was just referring to a hypothetical situation. That was not very rich for what he conceived of through those emotional words and unclear implications. At that moment, a question which Taeil had provoked ran through his mind, _what if Taeil loves me?_ And he did choose an answer. _Yes, I love him, too_. Where was the wrong part Taeil had claimed? He did love Taeil, his best friend, soulmate and life savior, and if “savior” and the like were too excessive, “brother” would do.

He’d said _yes_ without hesitation because it was Taeil, and Taeil would do him no harm. Because the _idea_ of Taeil felt right. Because in the rest of his life, if not Taeil, who would spend their lifetime with him? He could think of no one. Who would be willing to stay at this valley with him? Only Taeil would. Taeil would _stay_. Taeil wouldn’t _flee_ away. Taeil wouldn’t ask him to do things he wasn’t capable of. On top of all, _he stayed_ , that was all Taeyong had ever needed. He believed in Taeil.

 

On a late winter morning, snow was piling up outside. The valley was engulfed in whiteness, all boundaries erased. Inside the office, it was safe and warm. Taeyong sat in his chair, hands flat on his desk. The conversation between Dongyoung and one of the freight boys raging at the entrance threshold had his attention for a while now. He didn’t understand since most parts of it were spoken in Korean but he could guess, for recently he had developed such a talent of guessing what people were talking about. He’d done quite a splendid job. He’d also kept track on the schedules, statistics, plans just in case since his boss’s most severe beratements always related to staff’s ineffectiveness; still, more than anyone he knew the precaution, in no way, could bring him a sudden understanding of any foreign language in just few weeks. On the other hand, those things did help evoking an illusion that he’d been doing something to change the situation. Dongyoung seemed to forget how to speak English all together, as if this valley were another Seoul or Seoul itself Taeyong had no way to define anymore because it sure did look, and feel like one (not that he had a sense of how Seoul supposed to feel like and look like). But something else mattered – that was him alone failed to make a significant difference, as in by his presence reminding the people working in this office that “ _no, here isn’t our home_ ”. The man in charge continued acting like a mad and vicious villain one could find in those damn old novels. Taeyong eventually tried to put his poor Korean vocabulary into use but failed to converse from time to time. Today, something drove his boss rather insane, his voice high-pitched and constantly cutting off the other guy. Apparently he couldn’t find anyone willing to drive the truck hundreds of kilometers mountain-road to pick up the new shipment from Korea at the big city’s airport in this kind of weather. When it snowed, hard like today, the valley became almost isolated. No one got in and no one got out. But had such a perfect timing the production run-out chosen to start: just right after winter lotions’ orders had arrived at the office like a flood of good news, only to be welcomed with a kind of party he’d never witnessed within these walls. As worse as it could get, the snow wouldn’t seem to cease falling anytime soon. It explained Dongyoung’s frustration, the fun party which hadn’t reached its climax yet, was cut off just like that, by no one’s fault. Most important of all, the rare chance to make big money was slipping right off Dongyoung’s hands at any moment. If that happened, of course the long held title “Salesman of the Year” of his would say goodbye too.

No way Dongyoung would let that happened.

After debating for almost half an hour without obtaining agreement which in this case Taeyong might want to call “sacrifice for the boss”, the man in charge decided the only solution left was to call a local driver over. Turned out the conversation had to be in English since the driver wasn’t some Korean like the bunch of them, obviously. Taeyong joined the audience, busy wondering to himself if Dongyoung found the inevitability this situation forced on him annoying; Taeyong doubted not would think him standing and listening to his English talk so useless in making the atmosphere any more pleasant than the way it was (not that the big boss got insecure with his English skills or something).

“No one is driving that far in this kind of weather.” Suddenly Taeyong thought of how well he knew of that old driver who had always lived near the forest. _So fucking well._

“But the snow has ceased falling. We’ll pay you double, even triple, ok?” It needed not two seconds for the old man to give his answer. He waved his hand off and shook his head in such regretful manner often seen in the bees when they had to leave the flowers which they already knew were toxic. He then proceeded on his way _almost_ immediately; a glance was quickly sent to where Taeyong stood and Taeyong fought with all his might to keep his face remained nonchalant.

Doyoung stormed inside, past Taeyong and stood in the middle of the room, yelled. “WHO is going to get them god-damn-packages?!”

Surprisingly, he knew to speak in English not any sooner but only now - _talk about_ _irony, huh?_ Taeyong looked around, nobody looked up. It’d been an amusement for Taeyong to see Dongyoung failed to get what he wanted _right.away_. Taeyong wished he could have the courage to tell him to go out, drive and get _them damn packages_ by-him-self. But he held back and sneakily watched the anger on big boss’s face flourished, like cherry blossoms in spring. Now big boss started throwing anything he could get his hands on to the ground. The violent behavior struck fear to every single one of the staff, the silence only richened. Who could believe he would be this desperate?

“I’ll go.”

With perfect spoken English, that was from Taeil. And the moment sank in seemingly too long to bear. Taeyong’s eyes darted to see Taeil’s face. He couldn’t be serious, could he? How on earth would that forever quiet, calm and old-fashioned young man want to volunteer for such suicidal task, for someone as selfish as Dongyoung? A voice in that exact moment rang in Taeyong’s ears, his breath shaken.

“No. Taeil. You stay here.” Taeil calmly watched Taeyong’s terrified expression. He would _not_ change his mind, his eyes just said so loudly. The moment dragged on, Taeyong wasn’t so sure anymore; one of the freight boys trying to talk sense into his supervisor; the girls yelling something out of their lungs; Dongyoung encouraging him with _praises_ …

His silence.

No, Dongyoung. Dongyoung. Dongyoung.

Korean words again and again and again.

Noises from the phones, the fax…

Keys crashing on the ground.

The old man’s gaze on him.

That ringing voice in his ears….

 

That voice in his head turned out to be his own voice repeating what Jaehyun had written in the letter, about the places where people didn’t rush others, where they gave all the time and space a person needed.

Where the hell had he been? A paradise?

 

Those few hundreds of kilometers were the only way to get out of this valley, he knew this damn much. To get out of this valley one had to drive up and drive down a hill then another hill and another, he knew this too. In summertime, a trip on that winding, scenic road would be a wonderful memory but in wintertime, especially in snowing and freezing days like today, people didn’t even think about igniting their car’s engine. This was the fourth year living here for Taeil, how did he not know?

“I want to, that’s all.” Taeil shrugged decisively to calm everyone down. _Did he?_ Taeyong questioned himself, not quite believed it.

Dongyoung, on a completely opposite mood, was more than glad when he pushed Taeil out of the door to the big trunk lying outside waiting in the wintry weather.

“But you have stopped driving for ages!!!” Taeyong cried, rather hopelessly. He ran out, trying to reach Taeil like a crazy man. Many things crossed his mind during that fleeting moment – _there must be something I can use to stop him. Right, a word, like I always do, a single word, or a right sentence, which is it?_ Love him _? I said it already, only to send him into despair, then what. Then what? Then what? Why there are so many words? I know plenty of them, don’t I? They are the only thing I’m good at._

“I know how to drive, Taeyong. Don’t worry!” Taeil yelled back at him and smiled brightly and bravely before the outlines of his shape got swallowed by the snowfall, fading away into nothingness as he walked away.

Taeyong stood there forever.

Only if the snow somehow could swallow him alive for real then he’d gladly be exempt from the burdens of existing or existing itself, he wished.

 

It all was from Taeyong. The thought of Taeil staying, by his side, forever. He created that idea on his own.

And of course Taeil didn’t make it back, or he had never wanted to. One wicked turn had him for good. Snow was falling so heavily but he didn’t stop for one moment then _flash!_ –he was gone for eternity. Two days after the incident, they found the car lying deep down at the bottom of the abyss, covered in a heap of winter lotions. That same day the police came to the valley to take Dongyoung for an investigation. Other staffers were just questioned briefly. The office would be closed, for how long no one knew. Things just fell apart naturally, compared to how slow for them to get to this point; it was a quick end, quite rushed yet conclusive, though not very satisfying.

Somehow Taeyong knew, that Taeil had always wanted to get out of this valley. He’d wanted to do it so badly. Taeil might have always been craving for this kind of thrill in his life. Or he’d just simply wanted to get away from Kim Dongyoung for a few hours or so. How many times had he been bullied by that man? Taeyong missed the chance to ask. Now he couldn’t. Taeyong’d never asked what was wrong. _What did he say to you? What was the problem this time? Are you fine? Do you want to talk about it?_ He’d never cared. He just acted like he cared because, to be honest, hadn’t he himself got bullied too, so much worse than what the deceased had suffered.

At first, his death didn’t hit him that hard. It was certainly real, but it just happened to him that someone had disappeared because of someone else.

Not until the funeral, which was arranged by the sales girls, Taeyong came to know that Taeil’s mother had passed away too, probably a year ago or so. No one knew a damn thing. He’d acted fine all along. He’d never uttered a word about it, or shed a tear, or booked a flight and yet he’d always talked so highly of her, so frequently, so vehemently.

Taeyong refused to give a speech in that sad and gloomy event. The frozen ice on top of the ground was too tough to make a deep hole for the coffin but it turned out fine after much effort.  Sales girls and freight boys shared their thoughts about the decedent. A good person, one of the kindest, beloved by everyone, they said. Taeyong barely registered to his surroundings. He stared thinking how shallow the hole seemed to be, it had to be cold to lie here in this kind of weather, what would be written on his headstone, it should be something sweet. Then his mind changed to think about how bad Taeil had wanted to get out of this shithole but now he had to stay in it forever, on this solitude ground, right next to the forest. When the coffin was put down, Taeyong merely sent him his goodbye.

“Jooleh, Taeil.”

One of the kindest men alive had died.

 

Taeyong stayed by his windowsill for days, from where he could see the forest.

During these longest hours, Taeyong remembered every time Taeil had come and asked if life was still good. As he thought about it, he realized for each time he’d asked, something had probably gone wrong but Taeyong had always ignored. No, it was hardly the case; there had been something more to it – he had token it like an ironic remark, an amusement to the difficult circumstance they’d been in, in hope their funny little game somehow would have eased the pain. The question was an offer and the positive answer from him was very much a reply of complicity. And he’d answered _yes_ every damn time. There was this tiny chance that Dongyoung wasn’t the disaster after all. Disaster came from elsewhere, from the inside even.

When did Taeil lose it? Was it the time he asked if Taeyong loved him? Would things have been better if he said “ _no, I don’t love you_ ”, would Taeil have survived? Why had he asked such question anyway? Taeyong should have come find him and talked it out. Taeil might have known _it_ all along. He had lived here for four years, someone must have talked, not all of it, but enough for him to get a hunch. Things like those that Taeyong had heard.

_That is the maniac boy. Don’t know why he stayed here for all those years._

_That maniac boy was left behind by another maniac boy._

_There were once two crazy Korean boys, he was one of them._

The valley town had always been a small town indeed. Taeyong walked through and survived all the whispers, the stares with just few scars on his wrists. Taeil must have heard the story that Taeyong’d never told, and could never. Not anymore. That had to be the reason for those absurd questions. Taeyong had understood everything and yet he kept silence which was so much worse than lying. He’d been afraid. He needed Taeil by his side. Little did he know that by shutting his mouth, Taeil had been left to no choice. _Maybe that wasn’t a hypothetical situation after all. Maybe Taeil waited for him to share his secret so he could share his. Maybe Taeil would have wanted to spend the rest of his life here if only Taeyong was being more honest._

A thousands maybes.

 

With too much leisure gained from the generosity of being unemployed, Taeyong spent a whole morning treading all the way up to his parents’ little, lonely cottage on the mountain. Winter just reached its prime, making the air ripen with bleakness together something so close to pure emptiness. Vast. Everything was so breathlessly immense. _If one can ever go beyond the event horizon of a black hole, the other side must be… must be something like this – white, vast, quiet, filled with rapture and nothing scary – like death, like winter, like the valley_ , he whispered.

Taeyong always paid visits every winter since the first year they moved. For today, he wanted so badly to see his beloved ones, to let hours go by watching them doing nothing but breathing, living, talking, everything.

Much to his disappointment, Taeyong only got a piece of paper tucked between two closed doors. The house looked deserted, most of it covered in snow. His parents had left months ago for a new journey in order to find a resting place and write their books until death would do them part like the two romanticists they were. No information on where he could possibly find them was left. But it was fine though, they were all grown-ass adults.

So in the end, he who came to find comfort was abandoned in an absolute isolation.

 

Time from then went by insufferably slowly. A day near the end of winter, he wore Jaehyun’s shoes, came out of his house to watch people carrying the office’s furniture away. They were moving back to Korea, all of them. _The exile was eventually over_. From afar, he could get a glimpse of his blue, five-year-old desk. The brown one once belonged to Taeil. The staffers said goodbye briefly, they looked sad but no one shed tears. It had to feel so good to actually have a home to go back to. _The exile had come to an end_. Good for them. He never saw Dongyoung, not once, maybe never again. He was thankful for that. The office’s doors were going to be closed for a long time, Taeyong smiled at that thought. He looked at the patio where no chairs were there to be found again. How fast things turned, vanished into thin air, and gone forever. Shaking his head, Taeyong once again tried to make this precarious feeling in his heart gone, it faded back to the pale, forlorn pile of many other precarious things which he wanted nothing to do with anymore.

 

By the time it got dark, Taeyong found himself walking deep into the forest. This system of nature was not strange to him. He knew the path just as well as his old old friend did. So he kept walking on the trail Jaehyun had walked many times during their childhood days, with the exact shoes Jaehyun had used.

There were laughters of two kids inside Taeyong’s head. Jaehyun could easily hurt himself by tripping over his own feet, and next moment he would laugh it off like tripping was such a fun game to him. Sometimes he laughed too much or did something with too much energy. Sometimes Jaehyun incidentally hurt Taeyong too without realizing it. At other times, he cried over nothing or punched his chest. Other times he didn’t react to anything like a disabled person who couldn’t hear, talk or see.

Taeyong’s case wasn’t as worse. He just liked throwing things at people. He couldn’t sleep many nights. He got sad all the time. He never smiled. Those two crazy kids were running in and out the forests like some kinds of ghosts and it sent people chills. Sometimes they cried running, sometimes they laughed doing so.

When his legs gave in because of the long haul, Taeyong were still being surrounding by the trees while his mind wandering back and forth between the present and past. His eyes couldn’t penetrate this thick and cold darkness. Why just only now he could feel the cold? The Scandinavian cold in late winter could kill any man. But that didn’t matter in the moment.

He lied down on the plane of fresh snow below. Darkness pounced on him like a pride of lions catching the prey. His thought went back to Taeil, imagining that he too must have been in this position the seconds before death consumed him – back flat, unable to move, incredibly hurt, darkness and silence and coldness sneaking into his body. _“That’s it”_ , Taeyong giggled. _“That’s it”_.

 

Except for that was not it. He slowly opened his eyes again, unsurprised to find himself still breathing, lying on a wooden bed, under a heap of blankets which smelled like smoke and dried grass mixed together, in a creepily familiar log house. Bright, warm light poured on him, comfortingly. He sat up to look at the furniture designed in Scandinavian style – one of the many random things he’d written about. Then his eyes fixed on the fireplace nearby – the source of the warmth creeping in his veins. He was safe. Yet, the next second, a sheer realization not of the should-be-joyful revelation of being alive still, but of his savior’s identity, hit him like the loud, never-ending ringing sound of a church bell, toward which he’d harbored so much hatred.

“You woke? Care to eat?” The craziest driver in town who lived just outside the forest was making his way awfully slowly to Taeyong. His old, wrinkled white face showed with concerns. His grey eyes searched for any signs of unwellness from the young man.

“You could die lying out there, you know.” _Yeah…That wasn’t the plan but doesn’t sound so bad,_ he shrugged irritably _,_ remembering that his trip to the forest was in fact to find this house. There was something to say this time, this he remembered as well.

“If on that fucking day you had gone for those god-damn packages, Taeil wouldn’t have had to die. Why do the likes of you still exist?”

The old man simply looked down, unaffected. “Say what you need to say.”

And Taeyong erupted.

“WHY DID YOU DO IT? TO HIM? HE WAS JUST A CHILD!” His voice shrieked, cracking like crystals crashing and shattering on the ground. The condemnation came across in an unexpected painful tone.

“I DID NOTHING!” The man shouted back, voice filled with anger and tiredness as if it was the one hundredth time he had to repeat the same words.

“YOU ALMOST RAPED HIM! YOU RUINED HIS LIFE! YOU RUINED MY LIFE AND NOW YOU KILLED TAEIL! ABOVE OF ALL, YOU ARE STILL BREATHING! WHYYYY?!!!!”

All the accused chose to do was to shut his mouth tight, refusing to give even an attempt of vindicating himself to such ridiculous charges which, as if, were all too fictional, as if the complainant knew, before anyone else, were so not true. He went back to his chair and sat down in stiff movements, then stayed there completely still like a cold, hard rock. Even his breathing seemed to stop. His eyelashes didn’t move for a long time. This kind of behavior was to invite only one thing – the guest should leave. Taeyong wiped the tears on his face; and found his way out as quickly as possible, head lowered in either defeat or shame, or both.

Snow had started to fall again before Taeyong could get back to his small house. He stumbled in front of the door, his purplish lips murmuring a series of curses at his weak, useless limps. Never had he felt the valley this cold and dark. Just the other day, it’d been so bright, peaceful still, like a heaven with nothing scary at all, even a god. Now he could die just by looking at those magnitudes of colors stretching out to infinity, so far yet so close, too alike with the haunting nightmares of his early days. One more second spending on the outside he would lose his breath, but he didn’t. The clarity of consciousness swept back in a flash and suddenly he could breathe again.

A letter was lying inside the threshold.

_Ah…_

He moaned, tears flowing again. _He_ _hasn’t left… He is still here…_ Taeyong crouched down on the ground, crying out something like ‘the only one who hasn’t left… is the only who is not here’. His shaking hands pressed the letter to his chest and squeezed it so tightly. His handsome face became distorted, shining with tears. Half of an hour passed by like that, and then the poor man managed to drag his body to the bedroom table, flopped it down with the letter almost scrunched in his hand. He sat there, trembling for a good while before opening the long-awaited precious piece of paper, sent from god-know-where place of earth. How many months was it? Five? Six? A year?

 

_“Dear Taeyong,_

_Last night I couldn’t hold it back. It made me think that the bipolar disorder finally caught up with me. I cried over the memories of us. The night you never came to me, and the shoes I left at your door. I wonder if you keep them still._

_My parents who went back to Korea many years ago now are trying to reach to me. They wanted me there. I told them I can’t go without you because I wouldn’t survive. We talked about that peninsula which our parents referred as “home” so many times, you remember? It was no home to us. It still isn’t.  It’s just another peninsula._

_You were my home, Taeyong. At every moment I step my foot on a foreign soils, when I had to hold on my sense of identity, I think of you. I have loved you all this time. I loved you back then, at the valley and I still love you now, when I’m in middle of nowhere. You are the only reality that lasted, kept me going._

_But last night was hard. That thought came back, in a moment managed to persuade me. That it all was my fault. It was my fault that I ran too far ahead of you, that I turned to that god-damn path, that I didn’t resist the attraction of that mysterious log house. It was my fault too that I let what happened after made us crazy._

_On that mid-July night, I shouldn’t have waited, or hesitated. I should have just knocked on your door then held your hand and taken you with me. Now it has caught me and bit me in the neck to let me know that even if I flee to the end of the world, nothing will ever change._

_Now I fear. On this messy bed in a gloomy room of a gloomy hotel, I sat and watched the rain outside and thought maybe you are no longer living, maybe something had happened, and maybe you also went away for good. And it’s because of me, I caused it. I’m so sorry._

_J.”_

Taeyong tried hard to stop it but he couldn’t. His arms failed to support his torso, he slumped forwards, chest flat on the table and then let out a strangled cry, almost a scream. Deep inside he felt it as well; it finally caught up with him and he was sure that it wouldn’t leave him alive this time but no matter. Because if that was the case, he would stop being human, being himself; he would be something else, a falling star, a snowflake, aurora… and all of his sufferings would end as well.

Hours passed, outside a new dawn just broke and the snow had stopped falling. The sleepless Taeyong moved his hand to the left side of his table. He reached for a pen and a blank paper. And because he had lied still in that position for the whole night, his movements became awkward, his hand stiff and shaky.

After considerate effort, he now held the paper and the long unused pen in his hands, his back straight, and his eyes dried. It seemed to be a lengthy reply for the very first time, he fathomed, but more than that this letter would be an honest one filled with words he could actually believe in.

Taeyong wrote again and very soon after he also fled, out of the valley.

 

End.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :)


End file.
